Internet Access in Syria Goes Down Amidst Protests

The civil unrest in Syria has resulted in a shutdown of most of the country's Internet services, according to Renesys, a service that monitors Internet connectivity.

At approximately 6:35am local time, about two-thirds of all Syrian networks went down, Renesys said in a Friday blog post. "Over the course of roughly half an hour, the routes to 40 of 59 networks were withdrawn from the global routing table," the group said.

Syrian Internet access is primarily controlled by the state-owned SyriaTel. "They buy most of their Internet transit from Turk Telekom and Deutsche Telekom, with some contribution from PCCW, Tata, and Telecom Italia," Renesys said. "Connectivity has historically come in over submarine cable from Cyprus; activation of new terrestrial fiber connections to Turkey have been delayed by this year's political unrest."

What about the one-third that remains online? Renesys said those connections belong to the Syrian government. The Web site for the country's Oil Ministry is online, as is Syrian Telecom's official page, but the Ministry of Education, the Damascus city government page, and the Syrian Customs Web site are all down.

Notably, systems that are inactive include SyriaTel's 3G mobile data networks and smaller downstream ISPs like Sawa, INET, and Runnet.

Renesys did not have information on how the outage was coordinated, or what specific regions and cities might be affected. "If Egypt and Libya's Internet outages are any guide, one might conclude that events on the street in Syria are reaching a tipping point," the company speculated.

On Friday afternoon, Google confirmed on Twitter that "Google services currently blocked in Syria."

Syrian citizens have been protesting over the conditions in their country for almost three months, but the Washington Postreports that the movement reached a tipping point Wednesday when about 300 opponents of President Bashar al-Assad gathered at a hotel in Turkey to discuss their next moves. "It was significant that the government's opponents were finally coming together to try to present a united front to a world that remains skeptical about the Syrian protest movement," the Post said.

In February, there were reports that the Syrian government was lifting a four-year ban on YouTube and Facebook to allow Internet users to access the sites without a proxy server or VPN. The move was reportedly done to stave off "popular upheaval."

The unrest follows protests and violence across the Middle East in recent months, from Egypt and Libya to Yemen and Syria.

Internet service in Egypt went dark in January for several days amidst protests regarding the country's economic policies, government corruption, and the nearly 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak. The Internet also went down temporarily in Libya in March amidst similar protests.

The Syrian outage, meanwhile, comes the same day that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, Frank La Rue, released a report that noted an increase in governments restricting the flow of information online because of the Web's ability to mobilize protests.

He urged governments not to restrict their citizens' Web use, and called on them to develop a concrete and effective plan of action to make the Internet widely available, accessible, and affordable to everyone.

"There should be as little restriction as possible to the flow of information via the Internet, except in a few, very exceptional, and limited circumstances prescribed by international human rights law," La Rue said in a statement.

The report was championed by U.S.-based privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).

"The report by the Special Rapporteur raises concerns about justifying broad surveillance powers under the name of national security or counter-terrorism," EFF said in a statement. "La Rue should be commended for questioning the ostensible motives for online surveillance."

"As Rapporteur La Rue affirms, the Internet's unique ability to provide ample space for individual free expression can lead to the strengthening of other human rights, including political, economic and social rights," said Cynthia Wong, Director of CDT's Project on Global Internet Freedom. "In order for these rights to be realized, governments, civil society and industry must all continue to build on the work begun by the Special Rapporteur."

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 3pm Eastern with stats from Google.